Theosophy in
Theosophical Society,
Theosophy and the Great War
East and West - The destinies of Nations
by
Annie Besant
First Published May l9I5
In this "East and West" , and in
another lecture entitled "The destinies of Nations" which follows
hereafter, I propose to deal with the making of history in a way that seems to
me to give much deeper interest than one can find in studying it in the
ordinary historical textbooks. Here we shall take a more general view, while,
in the succeeding lecture, we shall specialise. We
shall consider the premises which underlie the present conflict in the
Now, in order to set forth this view of life, and to render
intelligible part of the argument that I desire to submit, I must define what I
mean here by " ideals". I mean the dominant
ideas expressed in civilisations, being shaped and moulded according to the dominant ideas or ideals, the
views as to life-values, that rule in the minds of the
nation concerned. And I say "eastern" and " western
" ideals, because the differences between these, and their utility
in the evolution of humanity at large, must be understood if we would rightly
follow the acts of the world-drama. And we need to understand that in the
present condition of affairs then is a distinct weighing down of a balance that
had grown too light and was threatening to kick the beam, so that humanity was
menaced by a loss of ideals vital for its full development. It is not that I
want to put the ideals of the East and West in antithesis. .Rather I want to
show that both are necessary in the great evolution of humanity,
and that there was a danger of late years that the eastern ideals might perish.
That humanity might not thus be deprived of part of its ideal wealth, it became necessary to redress the balance between
East and West, between
I have said I do not want to put these two ideals in conflict. None
the less, to some extent, that conflict has been inevitable; and it is, I
think, the part of a student of the Divine Wisdom to try to feel peace amid
combats, and to fix his eyes steadily on the goal to be arrived at, so that he
may not be whirled off his feet by the turmoil of the moment. If we look back
over the nineteenth century we shall notice that more and more the West has
been dominating the East - by conquest primarily, but to an immense extent by
the spread of western thought and civilisation
following in the wake of conquest. We have seen in eastern lands that the old
ideals tended to disappear. That they did not make their way largely in
Now this substitution of ideals has made but small way at the
present time. Of course, in
In
China, affected on her seaboards, was not at all affected in her
inland parts. There she preserved her old teachings and her old morality, butt
there was a question, in the descent of an armed empire on her coasts, whether
it would be possible for her to retain that isolation when Europe was
practically bordering her country with colonies under European rule. The time
was critical. Those who guide human destinies saw that the eastern ideals were
in danger of being trampled out, and that the West would only listen to lessons
enforced by the mailed hand. It was necessary to change the balance, and it is
changing under our eyes.
Now what are these Eastern ideals regarded as so important by the
great Intelligences that guide the destinies of nations? One leading eastern
ideal is that the world is under a divine governance,
that the destinies of nations are guided from the invisible world. In eastern
lands the unseen worlds always play an immense part in the drama of human life,
whether in the form of ancestor-worship so largely prevailing in Japan, or in
that same form, one of the great ruling creeds of China; whether in a modified
form of that same idea in the daily sacrifices to the Pitrs
in India, or in the form of the recognition of non-human Intelligences, such as
in the West are spoken of as Angels or Archangels. There is thus acknowledged
to be a most powerful, constant, and directive action playing on the world of
men from superhuman Intelligences that do not belong to the human evolution.
That belief is universal in the West. It is not a mere lip belief;
it is an active, working belief recognised in
ordinary life. If over in the West some public men, discussing some question of
public policy, talked about the influences of Angels as one of the things with
which politicians had to reckon, you can imagine the kind of comments that
would be passed in the journals on the following morning; but in the East that
is natural; the work of the Devas, as Indians call
the Angels, is part of the recognised work of the
world, and every nation has its ruler in the unseen world, guiding the rulers
on the physical plane. How utterly different is the attitude
to life among peoples who thus regard superhuman Intelligences as constantly
intermingling in human affairs. We find the belief very much, of course,
among the Jews of old, where they speak of the Angels of the nations. We find
allusions to them in the canonical Scriptures, sometimes veiled under the name
of Jehovah, or Elohim - translated into the singular
form God, though plural in the Hebrew - the Hebrew not meaning by that at all
the supreme God of the universe, but the tribal national Deity, such a one as
we should call an Archangel at the present time. And that this is so is obvious
when we find that in the battle fought by Israel against opposing forces, he
was able to drive out the inhabitants of the hills but not the inhabitants of
the plains, because they had chariots of iron, and the one who was able to
conquer the hill-men but not the plain-men was the "Lord"; yet surely
it was not the universal Deity who was thwarted in His attempts by the mere
possession by His opponents of chariots of iron. And so among the early
Christian Fathers, especially in Origen, you will
find many allusions to the national Angels that belong to particular peoples
and not to the universe at large. It is true that in modern days in the western
world the name of God is very often invoked in national strifes,
and each nation claims that help as belonging specially
to itself. But I heard the other day of a little boy making a remark that
seemed to me to show a truer insight into the relation of God to man than many
of the statements made by rulers and by statesmen, when they claim the success
of their arms as proofs of the divine favour of the
Lord of all. For, hearing his elders discussing the war now going on, and
hearing a difference of opinion as to whether God was on the side of the
Japanese or Russians, he struck in with his young voice and said: "I do not
think God fights either for the Japanese or Russians; nor do I think He would
fight for us if we went to war, although of course we should ask Him to do it;
for God is against no nation, but He is for every one." That the divine
government is carried on by these various subordinate agencies, who often
struggle among themselves as men on the physical plane also struggle, is a view
interwoven into the very fibre of eastern thought,
although it has vanished from the West. .And that ideal of the invisible worlds
mingling ;in the affairs of men was one that had to be
saved.
This view of a divine governance moulds
the eastern idea of human government; it is always thought to be drawn from
above and not from below. The idea that a King rules by the voice of the people
rather than by divine authority is only just making its way into eastern
thought among nations influenced by western ideas. The result of the view that
he who sits upon the throne rules by divine appointment and not by human
suffrage has been that all through the East the responsibility of the higher
for the welfare of the lower has been a definite, established thought. You find
it through all the literature, although it is perishing now. Confucius, asked
by a King why thieves were so prevalent in his land, remarked
: "If you, O King, lived honestly and justly, there would be no
thieves within your realm". So again, through all the old laws of India,
you find the King, the governor, the ruler, right down to the pettiest village
official, held responsible for the happiness, health, prosperity, of the people
whom they ruled. Hence the difficulty very, often in the
elder days of finding any one who would take office as governor of a district,
of a town, or of a village. Strictly held accountable, by the ruling
hierarchy right up to the King himself, for the happiness of the ruled, the
place was not a bed of roses, and there was less satisfaction to pride than
demand on time and industry. For, great as was the power of the King in eastern
lands, there was one thing that ever stood behind his throne, administered by
invisible rulers. That something is denoted by the word Danda,
and it is translated "punishment" by Max Müller
in his translation of the Institutes of Manu. But I believe the true
translation would be the word "Justice," or "Law", rather
than "punishment" - Justice regarded as a Deva
ruling Kings more sternly than peoples, so that where the King went against
Justice, Justice cut him off. So you have the famous warning, that you may
read, coming from the lips of a Hindu statesman to a young monarch, where he is
warned to dread above all else the cries of the weak. "Weakness",
says the dying statesman, " is the worst foe of
Kings. The curse of the weak, the tears of the weak, destroy
the throne of the oppressor." And that thought goes through all the old
theories of government in the East; so that even to-day, in
Let us pass from that view to the next great ideal that we find in
the East, growing naturally out of this ideal of the responsibility of the
rulers for the ruled: the idea of Duty. The word "duty" does not carry
with it the force of the Samskrt word
"Dharma" which means far more than that. It means the law of all his
past, whereby the man is incarnated into the place for which his evolution fits
him; the law which, placing him there, surrounds him
with all the necessary duties, by the discharge of which his next stage in
evolution will be made. All that is contained in the Indian word
"Dharma". Coming into the world, then, with the past behind us, we
are guided into improper environments. In the duties imposed upon a man by that
environment lies his best path of evolution. If he follow them well for the
progress of the soul; if he disregard them, progress
for him becomes impossible. Hence the social and political ideal of eastern
nations is built on duty, to take the narrower word. The ideal here, of course,
is "rights". A man has certain rights with which he is born; that
idea made the American Revolution, and later the French, and still later became
the basic thought of the political and economical writers of the early days of
the nineteenth century; but that idea of rights has no existence in the East.
It has its place in evolution, but it is an ideal of combat, of competition,
absolutely necessary, with all its undesirable accompaniments, as a stage in
the progress of humanity; but it is the very antithesis of the eastern ideal,
which sees a man surrounded by duties and is practically blind to his rights.
No man following an eastern ideal says: "It is my right to have so and
so". Duty, yes, duty to all around, to inferiors, to
equals, and to superiors, but always duty, and no excuse for broken duty
because another has broken his duty to oneself. Hence arises an entirely
different attitude towards life; hence the ease of ruling eastern peoples. Now
I am not arguing for the one or the other ideal, but only trying to make us all
realise the profound difference between the two, and
the value to the world of that ideal of duty, that it should not wholly pass
away from the minds of men. What it can do embodied in a nation, we have seen
in the triumphs of
Out of that ideal, again, grows another thought: the relative
character of all morality. A man born into a certain environment of duty finds
his proper morality in the discharge of the duties imposed upon him by his
environment. Hence his morality will vary with his position, with his stage in
evolution. No eastern sage or thinker dreams of laying down one common moral
ideal for all; that is a purely western fancy, and does not on the whole work
very well. In the East the fighting caste will have its own set of duties and
its own morality; the caste of teachers will have its own, duties and its
morality, very different from the humility of the fighter; the merchant caste
will have its own duties and its own morality; and the peasant and the artisan
will have - their own moral code and duties. The servant has his special code,
with comparatively few duties to be found within it - obedience, honesty, and
good service - but those to be thoroughly discharged. Outside that, what would
be willed wrong is not regarded as wrong for him. The other parts of moral
codes will find their accomplishment in lives yet to be lived. There is no
hurry. We need not try to compass universal perfection in a single life - the
most impossible of all impossible tasks. If we learn the duties belonging to
our stage and do them well, our progress is secure. Hence the moral code will
vary with every stage. I will take a common example. A man out in
The last great ideal of wide spreading importance that I can deal
with here is the ideal of what is now called the "
simple life," and of voluntary poverty. There must be in a nation
some standard of social position. Among most of the western nations, coining
down from feudal times, the standard of social position has been a standard of
birth. Of late years that has become largely mingled with a standard of money,
partly because great wealth often received the title which placed its owner
among those whose titles came to them by long descent, and partly because, with
the growing luxury of the time, wealth weighed more and more heavily us a
social distinction. The result of that is widely to be seen in the vulgarising of society, in the loss of noble manners,
stately and dignified. A man making a vast fortune has not, as a rule, time, leisure,or taste for the culture
of the more delicate mental faculties, and those graces that go with a culture
that has come down through centuries. And so gradually, in the western world, a
new standard asserts itself against the standard of birth :
the standard of great wealth. Society is adapting itself to the new conditions;
no future Tennyson will write about :
that repose
That stamps the caste of Vere de Vere.
The manners of the great lady of the past are indeed past, and loud
voice, noisy laughter, familiar gestures, have taken the place of the soft
tone, the low musical In laughter, the courteous but stately bearing of the
leaders of society, when a golden key did not open all doors. And the change
means much, for
Manners are not idle, but
the fruit
Of loyal nature and of
noble mind
An aristocracy should he the custodian of stately manners,
dignified bearing, artistic culture, simple or splendid living, according to
the seemliness of the occasion, the ever-present example of "
good taste ". It is now only too well symbolised
by the motorcar, rushing headlong, careless of life and limb, screaming its
right of way discordantly, rattling noisily and panting furiously, regardless
of all comfort but its own, scattering dust and evil smell on all behind it.
Now in the East, wealth has never been regarded as the standard of
social' consideration ; on the contrary, the gathering
of wealth was the work of the third caste, not of the second nor of the
highest. The warrior and the teaching castes had not the duty of gathering and
holding wealth. The warrior had to be generous and splendid. You may still find
in India an immense display of wealth in rulers and princes on State occasions;
but go into their houses when no great ceremony is going on, mingle with them
in their domestic life, and you will find there a simple life - splendour for the ceremony of the rank, simplicity for the
service in the home. And when from the warrior caste with its public splendour you pass on to the class of learning, then wealth
is marked as a disgrace, not as reason for pride. "The wealth of a teacher
is his learning", it is written. And social consideration you must remember, has gone to the teacher, not to the millionaire,
so that the millionaire and the prince alike bow down at the feet of the half
naked but learned man. That gives an entirely different standard of social
life, and it works effectively even now, with all the changes that have come
over Indian life. The ordinary round of living, so much alike in the different
classes, draws these different classes together in a way that is never dreamed
of in the West. You send for a man in
Now that simplicity of material life which lays stress on
knowledge, character, service, instead of on wealth, how well it would be for
western nations if that also made its way to some extent among them ! The
frightful competition, the multiplication of endless articles of luxury, the
crowding of houses with useless furniture, and the heaping on that furniture of
still more useless knickknacks, so that when you go into a room it is more like
a bazaar than a room - all these things you see on every side do not tend to
beauty but only to ostentation. It is the vulgarising
of the whole of the peoples, and the dragging them down to a lower plane of
life. It means increasing competition, increasing struggle. It means the
growing poorer of the poor, while the wealthy become wealthier; for it means
the turning of labour into useless channels, the multiplication of new wants
and the devisal of new objects to meet those wants, until all life grows
complex and overburdened. And while I would not ask that every life should be
as simple as the best Indian life, I do say that it would be well for England,
and well for all the western nations, if those who alone can do it - the
wealthy and the highly placed, especially the highly placed, even more than the
wealthy - followed a noble simplicity and a dignified beauty of life, which
would encourage.true art but discourage idle show,
and replace ostentation by beauty, and undue luxury by simplicity.
Now, to come back to my
starting-point. Those ideals of the East were in danger of perishing. Humanity
cannot afford to let them die. Western energy, western initiative, western
willingness to bear responsibility, are all good for eastern life
; but the West has also much to learn from the East as well as much to
teach, and the danger was lest the growing power of the West in the East should
kill out those great ideals which change men's attitude to the world and to
life as a whole. And if the balance is being redressed today, if on land and
sea an eastern nation is conquering a western, it is because the West will only
learn to respect where armed force can hold its own against the West, and
eastern ideals have no chance of anything save contempt and despisal
until they are lifted on high in a hand that can wield the sword, and show
itself as strong on the field of battle as it is in the realm of mind.
THE DESTINIES OF NATIONS
IN the last lecture I pointed out that certain great ideas,
necessary for the evolution of the race, may be said to belong especially to
the civilisations of the East, and that those ideas
were in danger of being trampled out by the advancing western civilisations. We saw that that was a danger to humanity at
large, the ideals of both eastern and western civilisations
being necessary in the future of the world ; and that
it became necessary for some definite interference to take place to
re-establish the balance of thought. I now want to draw attention to the nature
of that interference, to show what lies behind the destinies of nations and
what forces guide the current of affairs, so that we may see through the veil
of events to the forces that guide them. The great world-drama is not written
by the pen of chance, but by the thought of the Logos, guiding His world along
the road of evolution. In the course of that evolution many beings are
concerned. We have to look on this world as part of a chain
of worlds all closely interlinked, all the inhabitants of these different
worlds having something to say in those parts of the drama which are
being worked out in each. We are all living in three different worlds, and not
only in one; and whether in the physical world, or in the next world, the
astral, or in the third, the heaven world, the inhabitants are busy with the
general conduct of affairs which affect all three. Life becomes enormously more
interesting when we recognise that it is shaped not
only in the physical world but in other worlds as well, and that when we trace
the destinies of nations we find that those destinies stretch backward, and
that the working out in the present is largely conditioned by the energies of
the past.
Let us look for a moment on the rough plan of the whole. Let me put
it as though it were a great drama written by a divine pen. The story of the
world, and the various parts of the actors on the stage, are all therein
written. What is not laid down is who the actors shall be, and with regard to
this a large amount of what is called choice comes in. This drama is the
manifestation of certain great ideas in the Divine Mind, ideas written, as it
were, in the heavens; for it is suggested in very ancient thought that what we
call the signs of the Zodiac have a definite connection with the course of
human affairs. Of that, in the broad outline, there is no doubt in the minds of
any who have penetrated somewhat behind the veil. The importance of those
starry influences cannot be over-estimated; for inasmuch as human beings are
related in the composition of their physical and other subtler bodies to the
worlds among which they move in space, there must be magnetic relations
existing between them and the system of which they form a part, and at certain
epochs in the history of evolution there will be one or another dominating
influence present in the atmosphere in which men think and act, and they can no
more escape that influence than their bodies can escape the influence of the
far-off sun. The great drama, then, is the grand plan of human evolution. It is
full of parts which are to be played by the nations, but not necessarily by
this or that nation; for the nation qualifies itself to play a certain part
which may be offered to more than one nation, and one or another may rise to
the height of its great opportunity.
Leaving that for a moment, let us ask a question as to the forces
which help to adapt players to parts. Is there to be found, in what seems the great
chaos of human wills, any guiding force which brings
the actor and the part together? You cannot well have a drama vast as the
world-process, as evolution, and then a great gap between the Author of so vast
a plan and individual players who make up the nations and choose the parts.
How is the right player to be brought into touch with his part in
the history of the nation, in the history of individual successive births and
deaths? That is the next point to grasp.
Now the vast machinery for bringing together the parts and players
is found in the hierarchies of superhuman Intelligences recognised
in all the religions of the world, and in the occult teaching on which they are
founded. Not one great religion of the past or of the present does not see
surrounding the world and mingling in its affairs the vast hierarchies of
spiritual Intelligences into whose hands is put the work of bringing together
the players and the parts. You will see if you turn to the religions of the
nations of the past, how they have recognised these
workings as playing a great part in the practical shaping of the destinies of
nations. Not one great people of antiquity that did not have its own national
"Gods".
The word "Gods", however, as used in the English tongue,
is very confusing, for it is applied not only to those great hosts of
Intelligences, but also to the Supreme, the Logos, the Author of the drama. Now
in the nations that have other religions than the Christian, this confusion
does not arise. It is when the Christian is contemplating those whom he calls
the " heathen " that the greatest confusion
arises, for over the whole of their vast theology he uses the one name
"God". And yet he might easily escape that by remembering that his
own cosmogony is only a reproduction of the older thoughts of these more
ancient peoples. In the East there is one name which is used for these
Intelligences - the name "Devas", from the
root "div", to "shine" or to "play"; the
"shining ones", or the "playing ones", would be the English
translation. When Bunyan so often used the term "shining ones", he
was using a quite eastern phrase, for it is by that name that the East knows
this great hierarchy of Intelligence. Among the Christians and Musalmâns, whose religions are drawn largely from the
Jewish, the name "Angel" is used, the terms "Angel",
"Archangel", "Cherubim", "Seraphim", and so on,
being represented in the older faiths either by the word "Deva" or by a word derived there from."God",
in the Christian sense, is known by other names, and no confusion arises.
In all the old religions these Devas
played an enormous part, and each nation had its own
particular set of Devas. The Egyptians regarded
certain superhuman Intelligences as their earliest lawgivers,and the connection between the human lawgiver, the
Divine King, and the Deva is always clearly marked.
Every civilisation takes its rise in a little group,
partly human, partly superhuman, to which it looks back and from which it draws
its laws. The Greek had his Demigods or Heroes, and his Gods or Devas. So among the Chinese, the Persians, the Indians, the
same idea is found of the nation being founded by the group which contained the
human lawgiver and the Deva who worked with him in
the building of the nation. Celsus hints that the
Beings " to whom was. allotted
the office of superintending the country which was being legislated for,
enacted the laws of each land in co-operation with its legislators. He appears
then to indicate that both the country of the Jews, and the nation which
inhabits it, are superintended by one or more beings, who
co-operated with Moses, and enacted the laws of the Jews" (Origen, Con. Cel. V, xxv).
Now the Divine Kings, the Heroes, passed, but the Deva remains still at the head of each nation, a real existence
in the astral and heavenly worlds, with a crowd of less developed intelligences
under his guiding hand. And when you come to the Jews, you find that idea very
clearly laid down in their scriptures. I pause for a
moment upon it, because the sentence I am going to take from the Old Testament,
from Deuteronomy, gives exactly the idea which I want to take in considering
the working out of a nation's destinies: " When the Most High divided the
nations, when He dispersed the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people
according to the number of the angels of God; and the Lord's portion was his
people Jacob (Deut., xxxii, 8, 9, Septuagint). To many modern readers the
latter part of that sentence, "the Lord", may sound surprising, for
they are accustomed to connect that word with the Supreme God; but we can see
from the whole of the sentence that it is the name "Most High" which
indicates the Logos, the manifested God, and He ' divides all the nations of
the world according to the number of the angels, and to one great angel,
"the Lord", He gives Jacob, Israel, as his peculiar portion. Origen, in dealing with this, alludes to the "reasons
relating to the arrangement of terrestrial affairs," and points out that
in Grecian history " certain of those considered to be Gods are introduced
as having contended with each other about the possession of Attica; while in
the writings of the Greek poets also some who are called Gods are represented
as acknowledging that certain places here are preferred by them before others"
(Cau.Cel. V, xxix). And so
he points out that after what lie regards as the symbolical dispersion, .at the
building of the
" And I answering
said unto her, These things are very admirable; but, lady, who are those six
young men that build ?
"They are, said she, the angels of God, which were first
appointed, and to whom the Lord has delivered all his creatures, to frame and
build them up, and to rule over them. For by these the building of the tower
shall be finished.
" And who are the
rest who bring them stones
"They also are the holy angels of the Lord; but the other are more excellent than these. Wherefore when the whole
building of the tower shall be finished, they shall all feast together beside
the tower, and shall glorify God, because the structure of the tower is
finished" (1st Book of Hermas, Vision iii, 43 -
46).
Clement (1st Epistle, xiii, 7) quotes the text above referred to.
Also the following remark about Jesus, made by Satan to the Prince of Hell, is noteworthy : "As for me, I tempted him, and stirred up
my old people the Jews with zeal and anger against him" (Gospel of
Nicodemus, xv, 9). The Jews were under Saturn, or Jehovah, according to Origen. The same idea, is taught
among the Musalmâns. They regard the angels as taking
a very active part in the affairs of men. And it is hardly necessary to remind
you that in the great epic poems of India, the Mahăbhărata
and the Ramăyăna, you find the Devas
mingling with the affairs of men, so that when great quarrels are to he decided
they manifestly take part in the strife, each struggling for the particular
tribe or nation placed in his hands for its evolution. A correspondent, Mr.
Tudor Pole, of Bristol, tells me that there is an old Teutonic legend that on
New Year's Eve all the "Inner Rulers", the Angels of the nations
assemble before the Council of the Gods to receive their orders for the coming
year; each has his request to make as to the destiny of his nation during the
coming year; the Council arranges the part that each nation shall play during
the ensuing year, and the great Lords are consulted. Finally, the Rulers
disperse, some with music and joy, some weeping, some in great agony.
In
Of course, in modern times this idea has disappeared, and it must
seem like a fairy-tale to modern readers when one brings such thoughts into
touch with what may seem to them things, so much more real - the strifes of Kings, and the politics of the modern world. And
yet behind all these the coordinating forces are still continually at work ; and when the time comes for a nation to play a
triumphant part in the current history of the world, then, many years before
the time of the triumph, there are guided into that nation by the Deva souls which are fitted for its building up and
guidance in the coming struggle. And when the time comes for a nation to sink
low in the current history of the world, there are guided to incarnation there
souls that are weak, undeveloped, cruel, tyrannical, having fitted themselves
to fill such actors' parts in the great national drama. Let us keep, then, that
theory in mind : the drama on the one side, this great
coordinating agency on the other, guiding the self-chosen actors to their
appointed parts.
And now let us look at some of the nations themselves, and see how
far the destinies that they are working out - fit in with this view of a
guiding hand behind the veil. Let us take for one instance the building up of a
mighty western empire, so that the great Fifth Race, with its evolution of the
concrete mind, might play its part in the drama for the benefit of humanity at
large. And let us see, if we can, whether certain definite currents may not be
traced which show a plan definitely worked out, and not the mere mingling of
the chaotic wills, ambitions, and selfishnesses of
nations.
Slowly was prepared this part of a nation to stand high above the
nations of the world. The first nation to whom that part was offered was Spain,
who had been preparing for it by a very marked and extraordinary evolution.
Into her was poured the great flood of learning which linked itself with the
dying philosophy of Greece, and drew its rich stores from the Neo-platonic
schools; into Southern Spain came the great incursion from Arabia, rich with
all the knowledge brought from the mighty schools of Baghdad, which spread over
Southern Spain and thence over Europe. To her was sent Columbus, who made it
possible for her to spread her conquering troops across, the Atlantic and
subject the new world to her imperial sceptre. How
did Spain meet that wondrous, opportunity ? In the
wake of Columbus came the army, subjecting Mexico and Peru to her sway, and
destroying their ancient civilisations, outworn and
ready for destruction. She had laid upon her shoulders the task of building up
in that new world a civilisation based on the solid
foundation left there by Atlantis, capable of supporting the structure of the
new thought and knowledge. All know how she missed her opportunity; how she
drove out from her own country the Moors and Jews, the inheritors of the
knowledge, the philosophy, and the science; and how, in the new world, with her
greed of gold, she cared nothing for the peoples placed in her hands, but
trampled them into the dust. So her part in the drama was taken away and
offered to another people.
Another nation became a candidate - a nation which, with many
faults, had also many great virtues. England, spreading abroad her race, more
and more subjected to her sway land after land. She gained the offer of a
world-empire by an act of national righteousness-the liberation of the slaves
from bondage, accompanied by the great act of national justice which sacrificed
no one class, but placed the burden of the liberation on the whole nation. For
that, those who guided her destinies were offered the possibility of world
dominion. All the nations that tried to establish themselves in that great land
of the East, India, one after another failed, until the English race placed its
feet therein. The story of the placing is not good to read, and many crimes
were wrought; yet on the whole the nation tried to do its best and correct the
oppressions wrought in India - then so out of reach - as witness her action
towards her great proconsul, Warren Hastings, when for his evil deeds she
brought him to trial in the face of the world. So, despite many faults, she was
allowed to climb higher and higher in the eastern world, partly also because
she offered, with her growing colonies and language, the most effective
world-instrument for spreading the thought of the East over the civilisations of the West. All know how far that has gone,
how all over Northern America, in far-off Australasia, as well as in her own
land, eastern thought and philosophy have everywhere penetrated, so that the
treasures of Samskrt learning kept so jealously until
the time was ripe for their dispersion, are being spread over the surface of
the globe.
Continually, by lessons ever repeated, those Higher Ones, who guide
the nation, are striving to impress upon England the lesson that by
righteousness alone can a nation be exalted in the long run. And in a critical
moment, when luxury was growing too enervating, too selfish, the terrible
lesson of South Africa branded on the English conscience the lessons that duty
and right must go before luxury. Through the fires of disaster a lesson was
taught to England which, may God grant, she has
learned for her future guidance.
And then there came the question of what nation should be chosen
for the work of lifting up those ideals of the East. India, at this stage of
the world's history, could not do the necessary service; she was learning her
lessons under a conqueror; but there was a nation in the Far East which had
within it the possibility of learning the lesson, and the Devas
of the nation began to concern themselves with the attempt to train up in that
far-off island a people who should be fit for the mighty task of uplifting
eastern thought, of showing that conquest might go on hand in hand with
gentleness and self-control, and that a nation might spring into a mighty power
without losing its sense of duty. The work began by a change in the education
of the people; which might make the nation conscious of itself, and then into
the soil thus prepared a group of heroic souls was born. The Mikado of Japan, a
mighty soul, fit to incarnate for that nation its own greatness, fit to use
such power that in brief space of years he might transform the nation, put it
into new shape, evolve in it unknown forces, and at the same time show out a
personality so wonderful that all that nation look to him as Ruler by Divine
Right, from whose sacred person flow the powers which in the nation are shown
forth, every triumph reflecting new glory on his personality. And round him
gathers one great one after another, for the labour of raising
up the nation, until at every point of importance you see a statesman, a
general, an admiral, fit to lead people from triumph to triumph. A group of
strong souls is guided to incarnate there, in order that the nation may fulfil its destiny; for no nation can bo
great unless at the centre there be an ideal, and a perfect loyalty and
self-devotion. It is no mere lip phrase, but voices a feeling deep in the heart
of the soldier and of the general, when they thank their Ruler for the victory
in the field, and with the eastern devotion say that he is the representative
of God amongst them.
Glance at the other nation in the great duel which is being fought
in Eastern Asia, and see how strangely Russia, a nation with a great future
before her, is being guided through the frightful valley of humiliation. The
preparation for that calamitous part in the drama lies in that which has gone
before, even within the limits of our own lives. There was a moment, some
twenty five or thirty years since, when a wondrous opportunity came in Russia's
way. Although ill-judged, there was a noble impulse underneath the freeing of
the serfs, and there was a possibility that that act
might be turned to good purpose for the nation, and raise it higher, instead of
leading it well-nigh to destruction as it has done. And then there came, out of
many souls born just then among the nobles of Russia, one of the most wonderful
things the world has seen - a flinging of themselves out of their own rank down
amongst the poor, the ignorant and the downtrodden, a giving of themselves by
the lads and the girls of the nobility to the lifting up of the people, not by
a far-off charity, but by a wondrous impulse of uttermost self-sacrifice. And
how was that met? The divine compassion of those youths and girls was met by
the fortress of Peter and Paul, by the mines, and deserts, and snows of
Siberia. Nothing more terrible has been wrought by a government of any people
within modern times. And terrible the Nemesis. Driven
by despair, their attempts to uplift in all gentleness met with the knout and
the underground dungeon, with starvation for the men, with dishonour
for the women, what wonder some of them went mad ?
What wonder that some of them at last, after years of patience, after cruellest sufferings, answered with the bomb to the knout ? This state of affairs was created in the first place
by the bureaucracy, and not by the victims. Thousands upon thousands of those
who would have redeemed Russia died on the scaffolds, were slaughtered in those
frightful mines, until at last the patience of the Gods grew exhausted, and the
time came for the government to learn that governments exist for the helping
and not for the crushing of their peoples.
So
And see how
It is thus that nations are guided from above, and into the nation
that has to go downwards those are guided who inevitably drag it downwards. The
same was the case in
And how are these leaders chosen ? They
are chosen by their own lives in the past. A man is found unselfish, brave, and
noble, and such a one, in the countless choices of his daily life, is making
the choice for the splendid part that hereafter in humanity he shall play. And
so with those who are great outside, but have to play a sordid part. By
countless selfishnesses and preferring of themselves,
by taking ever the lower path instead of the higher, those men choose also
their parts in history.
Thus it is that the Occultist looks on human history, and sees
preparing around him on every side the men and women who are to be the players
of the future in the more prominent parts of the world-drama. For none forces
upon us any part, nor imposes upon us special place in the world-drama. We
choose for ourselves. We build up ourselves for glory or for shame, and as we
build so hereafter shall we inevitably be. Hence it follows that for a nation
to be great its citizens must slowly build up greatness in themselves. Hence it
is that the greatness that you see now in
And so with
Theosophical Society,